Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Space Hurricanes

Episode Date: July 28, 2021

Space hurricanes are officially a thing. What does that mean for us here on Earth? Probably not much. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Hey and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's the special But normal producer Dave here. I just mean special like in a way that like sure by special in all the right ways That's right in a romper room sort of way. That's exactly right and I'll tell you something else that special Chuck something very special happened on August 20

2014 over the magnetic North Pole of this here planet Earth For the first time in the history of humanity We documented what's known as a space plasma hurricane in that neat It's neat and this is something that wasn't fully Well, it was documented here and there but nature communications I wrote about it in February of this year. So I think it got a lot more attention Seven years after the fact Almost seven years, but yeah, this was like you said above the North Pole. It happened over a few hours

the results of What happened up there was there were some satellites that were disrupted The geomagnetic field got a little kinky for a little while But back here on Earth Well below the ionosphere we were just like I don't know what I was doing on August 20 2014 I could probably go back and look it was that unremarkable though I wouldn't think about space hurricanes No, because no one really noticed because in August. That's a pretty terrible time typically to see the auroras

Or at least the aurora borealis Because the day the days are so much longer than the night. So you can't really see this these These fantastic light displays, but had you been able to see the aurora borealis that night You would have been knocked right out of your your hiking boots basically because this was again a space hurricane It doesn't happen every day and we don't really understand fully how they happen or why but they're called space hurricanes because From what we saw from what this nature communications paper from February 2021 said it bears a striking resemblance to a Tropical hurricane or a cyclone or an Atlantic hurricane where there's a mass of

energy basically spinning around calm center There's a million differences between a say earthbound hurricane and a space hurricane but the fact that they're there you could even call both hurricanes is kind of startling and actually it seems to me Chuck kind of Like it's presenting like a new pioneer in scientific research now like we're like, okay How does this happen? Where do these come from? What is going on here? I agree and I also have to admit

I was distracted for a minute because I was obsessed with trying to figure out what I was doing on August 20th Did you ever figure it out? No, because I didn't open up my calendar and go back But I did find out that it was a Wednesday, so I know we probably weren't recording this no And it was a year after our TV show aired which aired over the course of what like 10 days Yeah, you were probably in hiding still may have been yeah, but I think that's probably a good place No, we can't break it. Can we sure we can it's a short stuff. I mean anything goes. All right. Let's take a break then I'll get my head back in the game. Hey

Friends when you're staying at an Airbnb You might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca host Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road Okay, see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do? You've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God Seriously, I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you Oh, man, and so my husband Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through life step by step Oh, not another one kids relationships life in general can get messy

You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so tell everybody ya Everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with the Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts Okay, Chuck you took a salt tablet you walked it off and now your head's back in the game, right? My head's back in the game. Where did you leave off? I left off about how how space hurricanes are basically presenting a a new pioneer frontier in in space research because Yeah, we didn't really know they existed We suspected something like that existed

But we certainly had no idea that there were arms of plasma that that spun around at Staggering speeds a calm center, but but it's not when we're talking about these aren't clouds This isn't water vapor like this is plasma. These are ions and electrons and just incredible energy and magnetism It has nothing to do with the earthbound hurricane and yet it bears a striking resemblance to it. It's very bizarre Yeah, it is interesting in that there is What you can think of as precipitation in both in that we get the rain on earth and there's this electric Precipitation and it's super interesting that there is an eye and that they spin and have arms Yeah, which you know

Obviously is why they're called hurricanes another was one meteorologist in here who in the house of works article that said He thought they might have been called space vortexes initially because it was over the North Pole and resembled the polar vortex But they went with the space hurricane. I guess because it's a little sexier probably So one of the other ways that they're different is the shears well from where they occur obviously the earth's atmosphere From I think ground zero or we should probably just say the ground the surface The from the ground to about five to nine miles up is where you're gonna find an earth hurricane Yeah, that's the troposphere

Yeah, whereas the space hurricane is in the ionosphere like I mentioned early on and then the sheer size this one I think was about 600 miles wide right right and this huge it is That's a good size about double the size of like a giant Atlantic hurricane. Yeah, and it's spun really fast 4700 miles per hour about 7,560 kilometers per hour I'm just whipping around and again, there's a calm center where this activity is not happening Where this rotation is taking place there is the the center where for the rotation and

We have a fairly good handle on hurricanes our our explanation in our hurricanes episode notwithstanding Science generally understands how hurricanes here on our works humans Space hurricanes again. This is new. There was there was one. I read an article about a guy who said yeah We're pretty sure one of these happened like 50 years ago, but we didn't have anything like the instrumentation today So we couldn't document it. This is the first one. We've actually documented. So this is like brand new to us But rather than wind and water vapor and clouds the space hurricane is made of plasma Plasma as we've talked about many times Chuck is the fourth state of matter where it's like solid And then you make it a little more energetic and it becomes liquid a little more energetic it becomes gas

Well, even more energetic than that is plasma where there's it's such high temperature And of course temperature is just another measure. Are you thinking about where you were on August 20 2014 again? No, I'm thinking about how plasma is the umami of states of matter. Okay, good enough As long as you're thinking about plasma right now, I'm with you man But it's so energetic and it's so high temperature, which is a measure of energy that like the electrons and the positively charged nuclei just get ripped apart and spread apart so that they don't interact. So you just got this electrified magnetized Incredibly hot energetic gas and that instead of clouds of water vapor or what make up the arms of the space hurricane

Right and as far as the conditions of when this happened in 2014 if you remember from our not the sun episode but uh What was it on solar winds? We did one on space weather. Is that it? probably when we talked about the The 11 year cycle of the sun. Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that we probably talked about it in both of them

But yes space space weather. I think it was better in space weather. I agree Uh, so at the time in 2014 when this happened still don't know what I was doing that day But on that Wednesday, the sun was at its maximum Of that 11 year cycle that we talked about Uh, and was also at a time of what the acu weather people called low solar and otherwise low geomagnetic activity so The people that they interviewed from acu weather said that it did resemble an earth hurricane and that there was uh, there's usually like quiet like the calm before the storm the quiet conditions

And it was the same in space. Although now I think we're having Uh, we're not sure if it was the maximum of the 11 year cycle set against low geomagnetic activity Or if it was the minimum and this is a misprint. Oh, I see I see so I see Um, so what I understand is that that yeah, can whatever it was the upshot is that The space weather was calm right like whatever normal space weather we get from the sun It was generally calm, which is weird because you'd think that it would be that Solar wind from the sun that would cause this kind of thing But they're like no we we actually have no idea where this thing came from

And the fact that it isn't related to the solar cycle that 11 year cycle Makes them think that it's probably a little more common than we realized and now that we know what to look for We're going to start noticing them So they think maybe it has to do with A change in the magnetic field lines where one was like ripped apart and then connected with the neighbor Releasing a tremendous amount of magnetic energy. That's one of the explanations. I've seen there's a few others too Yeah, and you know the um to borrow your phrase the upshot is is that it's really not going to matter much to us on earth uh, I guess if we had

any kind of um Space exploration going on during one of these that probably wouldn't be great if you were up there Right Just a guess but they kind of come back with a line that you always hear When it's something that could disrupt satellites is here on earth It might mess with your GPS. I feel like that's always what you hear Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, whenever there's satellite interference. It can be problematic. I mean that was a big part of the

Space weather episode two, but yeah and y2k. Am I right? Yeah, man, we need to do an episode just on that I can't wait to do that. Really? Yeah, we're going to okay the 90s are back Are they? From what I understand You know a new 70s sort of disco check bar is opening in Atlanta this weekend. So oh sweet when things are feeling really good I think you and me and emily and you me should all go Get our studio 54 on I would love that I'm going to go get some replacement goldfish from my platform shoes great because those other ones have been dead for years

They're getting a little gamey. I have You got anything else about space hurricanes? Nothing else look out for him. It's the new thing Yeah, just this is going to get a follow-up when we understand them a little more because they are amazing So until then this was your introduction to space hurricanes. I hope you enjoyed it. Chuck. Hope you enjoyed it Dave. Hope you enjoyed it and in space stuff Short stuff is out Stuff you should know is a production of I heart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the I heart radio app

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